The period between July and December is typically the period when studios release the films they expect to underperform or disappoint, as compared to their releases earlier in the year. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a film which, rather unfortunately, fits the aforementioned profile like a straitjacket. Helmed by Patrick Hughes of The Expendables 3 infamy, and starring Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, and Salma Hayek, The Hitman’s Bodyguard attempts to capitalize on the good-will of recent buddy cop movies like The Nice Guys and 21/22 Jump Streetbut, instead, winds up assassinating itself. Needless to say, this is Hughe’s most expendable movie to date.
Helmed by Patrick Hughes of The Expendables 3 infamy, and starring Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, and Salma Hayek. The Hitman’s Bodyguard attempts to capitalize on the good-will of recent buddy cop movies like The Nice Guys and 21/22 Jump Street but instead winds up assassinating itself. Needless to say, this is Hughes’s most expendable movie to date.
Michael Bryce (Reynolds), a formerly “triple A” rated executive protection agent who is reduced to working small side-jobs after his reputation is tarnished when his charge (a Japanese arms client) is murdered, is given the opportunity to redeem himself by completing the arduous mission of accompanying and protecting Darius Kincaid (Jackson), one of the world’s most notorious hitmen, to the Hague as Kincaid is set to testify in the International Criminal Court against Vladislav Dukhovich (Oldman), a genocidal European despot who has an almost endless supply of heavily armed minions for Reynolds and Kincaid to mow down.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard features chases and various capers from the UK to Italy and this is where the talents of Hughes can really be seen on display, as the dismantling of faceless henchmen is occasionally punctuated with scenes of creativity or levity. In one scene, Bryce engages a henchman in tool-assisted hand to hand combat through a hardware store and a restaurant kitchen. In another scene, Salma Hayek beats up a roomful of henchmen (set to the crooning of Lionel Ritchie’s Hello).
On paper, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is an assortment of every action film cliché of the last three decades, weighing down the strong promise of the casting and scripting. The Hitman’s Bodyguard boasts an exceptional starting roster of A-list stars and Tom O’Connor’s (Fire With Fire) script was on the 2011 list of most desirable unproduced scripts. In execution, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a movie that both long overstays its welcome (collapsing in on itself during the duration of its 2-hour run time due to over encumbered subplots and a zeal to extract every bit of humor from derivative one-liners) and kills any good-will the previous works of its stars might have engendered by caricaturing said stars. Kincaid’s dialogue and character is predicated upon the “righteous avenger” persona of previous Jackson performances but this is executed in the most derivative and crass of fashion, spewing vulgarity in between chastising Bryce (Reynolds) for crimping his style. I have not been this insulted by a misuse of Jackson’s talent since the Star Wars prequels.
Meanwhile, Dukhovich sits on the sidelines for the first two acts of the movie, only too eager to let his henchmen be used as fodder for the sake of entertainment (typical for a buddy cop movie but an utter waste of the talents of an actor of Oldman’s caliber). This is to say nothing of the galling, reprehensible attempts at establishing pathos as the film will stop at no lengths to win the audience over emotionally, utilizing mass graves as a plot-point and killing a crowd of protesters with an exploding bus with mean-spirited glee. In one scene, Bryce (Reynolds) just sits at a café in Amsterdam complaining to a bartender as a shoot-out takes place and bystanders run for their lives. This film is inundated by countless tone-deaf scenes like this which erode any sense of fun one may have gleaned from this film up to that point.
Ultimately, this film cannot be considered a celebration or revival of the buddy cop genre as such films live and die on the bond/chemistry between their leading men and even the heavyweight talent of Jackson and Reynolds cannot make The Hitman’s Bodyguard palatable as their characters cannot overcome their one dimensional arcs and dialogue. This is particularly frustrating when taken in consideration of the fact Jackson and Reynolds have given far stronger performances historically in films with a similar tone (see Deadpool and The Long Kiss Goodnight). If you feel compelled to see a movie this August, go see Logan Lucky instead.
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